devcontainers.md

Issue

Remote podman devcontainers are currently broken in VS Code on Windows.

Podman's internal SSH client explodes when trying to access the Windows ssh-agent pipe.

Cannot connect to Podman. Please verify your connection to the Linux system using `podman system connection list`, or try `podman machine init` and `podman machine start` to manage a new Linux VM
Error: unable to connect to Podman. failed to create sshClient: dial unix \\.\pipe\openssh-ssh-agent: connect: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.

It does not seem to matter if the ssh-agent Windows service is running or not. I found that podman works perfectly in Terminal through pwsh, powershell, cmd, and Start-Process. I think something in Code's remote containers extension is to blame.

Workaround

This is where I would describe a workaround, if I had one.

Alternative: Local Containers via WSL

If you have spare processing power and can forego remote devcontainers, follow the guidance at https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/run-podman-windows to prepare podman for local use.

{
	// Visual Studio Code's settings.json...
	"remote.containers.dockerPath": "podman",
	"remote.containers.executeInWSL": true,
	"remote.containers.executeInWSLDistro": "podman-machine-default"
}

SSH-Agent in WSL

• TL;DR: Forward Windows SSH-Agent into WSL via npiperelay
• https://github.com/jstarks/npiperelay
• https://stuartleeks.com/posts/wsl-ssh-key-forward-to-windows/

1. Configure Windows ssh-agent service to start automatically
2. Download npiperelay.exe to somewhere in Windows PATH
3. Install all three of procps socat openssh-clients in WSL
4. Create ~/.ssh (manually, using ssh, etc)
5. Create ~/.bashrc.d/99-wsl-ssh-agent.sh (or edit .zshrc, etc)

# https://stuartleeks.com/posts/wsl-ssh-key-forward-to-windows/
export SSH_AUTH_SOCK=$HOME/.ssh/agent.sock
ALREADY_RUNNING=$(ps | grep -q "[n]piperelay.exe -ei -s //./pipe/openssh-ssh-agent"; echo $?)
if [[ $ALREADY_RUNNING != "0" ]]; then
	if [[ -S $SSH_AUTH_SOCK ]]; then rm $SSH_AUTH_SOCK; fi
	echo "Starting SSH-Agent relay..."
	# setsid to force new session to keep running
	# set socat to listen on $SSH_AUTH_SOCK and forward to npiperelay which then forwards to openssh-ssh-agent on windows
	(setsid socat UNIX-LISTEN:$SSH_AUTH_SOCK,fork EXEC:"npiperelay.exe -ei -s //./pipe/openssh-ssh-agent",nofork &) >/dev/null 2>&1 ;
fi